I Am Phantom (20 page)

“Smart.
Brilliant. Funny. My baby.” She exhaled loudly and a second later I tasted the
sickly sweet peppermint of her cough drop. “Lucius loved science, that was his
passion.”

“Was
he unstable as a child?”

“Never!”
Martha cried. “My Lucius was perfect! It was those horrible, horrible men that
made him into what people think now. Did you know,” she bent her head down, as
though telling me a secret. She wouldn’t stop licking those chapped lips of
hers. “when he was working for Project Midnight—”

“Wait,
Sykes was with—”

“—he
was the one keeping them honest. My baby visited me before they destroyed him.
He said there were big things happening. But they were big, bad things. Bad,
bad things.”

I
had gotten fed up with her eyes venturing behind me, like a ghost stood at my
back.

“He
said that Dr. Ragan, I’m sure they told you about him, the man who funded the
project, was considering cutting it off. He didn’t like what was happening to
it.” She had practically thrown her body on the table now. I jumped up. Martha
clawed at the space in front of me, as if grasping for something I couldn’t
see.

“Tell
me where my son is, Phantom. Please. You know better than anyone what he’s
going through. They won’t tell me where they’re keeping him.”

Before
I had time to wonder who ‘they’ were, I heard the click of a gun behind me.

“I
held him until you got back,” Martha said. “Now give me my son. He’s all I have
left.”

“We
told you we don’t have him,” the man behind me said. I turned halfway to look.
Two Project Midnight agents were pointing their pistols at the back of my head.
“But, just as we guessed, Phantom showed up.” The man nodded to his partner.
“Relay a message that we got ‘em. About time we get out of this place.” The
other man grabbed for his phone.

“I
want my son!” Martha shrieked.

“Your
kid’s as good as dead!” The man yelled back, taking his eyes off me for a
millisecond. I dropped to the ground and kicked out both of their legs. Their
heads hit the back wall and cabinet with a loud crack. They didn’t get up. I
checked the phone. He hadn’t dialed anyone. I crushed it under my shoe.

“Leave
now, Drake,” Matt said into my ear.

Martha
was still gripping the table like her life depended on it.

“Did
they overhear us?”

“I
just want my son, Phantom, you understand that?”

I
shook my head. “I don’t care. Were they here long? Would they be able to follow
me?”

“They
were the only ones. They’ve been here for a month, but you came in when they
were gone. They didn’t tell anyone.”

I
glanced back at the unconscious men. “You should leave, too. Others will be
here. They may kill you.”

“But…my
boy…” I stepped over the men and out the front door.

“He’s
not coming back here.”

 
I stood on the porch and didn’t move for
a long time. It was becoming unbearable to stay here. To stay in a place that
had never changed. Holding a piece of Sykes that maybe once was, but no longer
remained.

Chapter
Twelve
 

The
Story of Sykes

“You
heading back for the ni-ni-night?” Cody’s yawn covered up anything else he was
going to say. “Sorry. Heading back?”

“Go
to bed, Cody. I’m going to do one last sweep.”

“Maybe
I should stay with you—”

“It’s
fine. I’m just swinging by the northern suburbs. I’ll see you tomorrow.”

It
wasn’t the truth, but Cody and Matt had kind of grown used to me going off by
myself in the wake of Project Midnight’s revival. Maybe they thought they were
doing me a favor by giving me space I needed. And they were. I appreciated it
more than they knew.

“Don’t
get yourself killed,” Cody said. “‘Night.”

I
weaved my motorcycle through the snow-cleared streets. I got it up to almost
seventy, but didn’t hear anything more than a dull rumble from the engine as I
tore down the road.

I
conjured up the address in my mind.

460
Pen Plaza, northern suburbs.

The
search for Dr. Ragan, the name Martha Sykes had let slip, had finally yielded
me an address after I did some snooping that would make Matt proud. He hadn’t
been too hard to find, but everything I read made it sound like the man was
dead. But I still had to check.

I
pulled to a stop down the street from the house I wanted. I turned off my
earpiece, stashed my motorcycle in one of the yards and snuck towards number
460.

Dr.
Ragan was the one who founded Project Midnight, that much I knew. Whether he
was aware of the extent it had gone, I didn’t know.

I
had to ask. And hope he had some answers.

Despite
the late hour, many houses still had lights on. Dr. Ragan’s was full dark.

I
hopped over the back gate and froze, my mask not showing anything interesting.
Oak trees cast shadows over a pool, covered for the winter, and the moonlight
swathed yard.

I
peeked around the corner. No dog. Hopefully there wasn’t one inside.

I
hadn’t thought about how I was going to break in. I would just try the door
first. Hey, I’m not a professional crook, even though I seemed to be adding the
breaking and entering skill to my repertoire of late. If the alarm went off I
could be out of there in an instant.

I
left the pool behind and went to the porch. Nothing moved inside when I looked
through the back door. I held my breath and tried the handle.

It
was unlocked.

There
was no alarm. Maybe it was silent. I was about to ask Matt to check the police
stream but remembered they weren’t with me.

I
stepped inside and into a laundry room. The living room was through the
doorway, past a washer and dryer and a pile of dirty clothes. I scooted past a
litter box and stepped next to the couch in the living room. There was no light
in the bedroom so I looked for where Dr. Ragan’s office might be.

“If
you’re going to stay you might as well make yourself comfortable.”

I
spun so fast my neck cricked. After a moment of hard looking I noticed a
shrouded, lumpy shape in the armchair, near the entrance to the kitchen. A
shadowed hand grew from the chair and reached towards the lamp next to it.

“Do
you mind? I find it easier to speak to someone when I can actually see them.”

I
didn’t answer. I hadn’t figured out what I was going to say to him.

“All
right then.” There was a click and the room flooded with light. I stepped back
into the dark of the laundry room until my mask adjusted.

“Oh,
aren’t you a shy one? Not shy enough to stop you from breaking into people’s
houses, though.” Once I could see better, I stepped forward into the light. Dr.
Ragan didn’t say anything but I saw his wrinkly eyebrows briefly flick upwards.
He looked mid-sixties. Full head of hair and glasses that hung from a fine gold
chain around his neck; his ears were wrinkled like raisins.

He
took a sip from a glass of orange juice, and removed a videotape from his
pocket, which he lay on the lamp stand beside him.

“What
can I help you with, Phantom?”

“I
want to know about Project Midnight.”

“Project
Midnight?” He shifted in his chair. “I’ve never heard of them.”

“I’m
not here to play games, Dr. Ragan. Sykes told me what Project Midnight did to
him. And to me.” There was the surprise I was hoping for. Catch him off balance
and maybe he’d tell me something.

“You’re
one of them, aren’t you?”

“One
of your freaks, yes.”

“No!
One of our finest accomplishments. Well, maybe not mine so much.”

“Your
accomplishments. Who are you to Project Midnight?”

“You
could call me,” he chuckled darkly, “your creator, I guess.”

A
part of me wanted to lift this pathetic old man by his ears and scream at him
that he was wrong, that I was my own person. How could he speak so casually
about what he was doing to people?

Instead,
I choked out, “What do you mean?”

“I’m
Project Midnight’s founder. I funded the program through its infancy.”

“But,
why? Why would you do that?”

Dr.
Ragan seemed to deflate, as if releasing an old memory.

“Sometimes…sometimes
things that look so good at one time really are the worst.” He sighed. “I used
to have a family, Phantom. I wasn’t like I am now, this lonely, bitter existence
spent scurrying between the lenses of people who want me dead. I had children.
Three beautiful children.” He looked out the window.

“They
died. All three of them, in an avalanche while climbing in the Himalayas. They
were everything to me,” he said softly.

“People’s
kids die all the time,” I said, hating how harsh I sounded. “But those people
don’t go off and fund crazy research projects. Why did you?”

Dr.
Ragan looked bemusedly over at me.

“Impatience.
Perhaps they added that to the next batch of serums. My children, my
everything, were dead, Phantom. Something I don’t think you can quite
understand unless you have kids of your own, which I doubt. I was overcome with
grief. And all I kept thinking was maybe if they were just a little stronger, a
little bit faster, and durable. My boy managed to dig his way out, but froze to
death before he could find help, they told me. Imagine, if you will, if he were
more like you.”

He
got up and walked over to a bookshelf. I jumped up. Dr. Ragan glanced at me and
chuckled.

“You’re
tense. The police aren’t coming. Project Midnight doesn’t care about me and
Sykes thinks I’m dead. You have nothing to worry about here.”

“Not
that I don’t trust you, but I don’t trust you.”

“Fair
enough.” He returned to the bookshelf and began running his fingers down the
spine.

“In
my grief my vision was limited, but in time I came to realize that others could
use that kind of gift, the gift of super human abilities. Firemen, police, any
kind of dangerous jobs. We would regulate it, of course. Only those with
special clearance or need would be given the serum.”

“That
doesn’t even sound good in theory,” I said. “The regulation would fail.”

“Many
things sound good in theory. I’m sure we had thought there was a way we’d make
it work. But that wasn’t what was important. I was already working on a very
successful gene project and was able to focus my talents on what we dubbed
Project Midnight.”

He
found what he was looking for, pulled a book from the shelf, opened it and
removed a disc. He returned to his seat.

“The
tests in animals were…unsuccessful. We were trying to make the skills you have,
but not nearly as high a level. It was unstable from the beginning. I thought I
had it under control.”

“Famous
last words. You could fill a book with people who thought that.”

“Indeed,
many books. The side effects were too dangerous to even think about human
trials. I shut it down.”

“You
shut down Project Midnight?”

Dr.
Ragan nodded. “I thought I did.” He waved the disc and got up to put it in the
DVD player. “I was wrong.” The T.V. came to life, showing a recording of a
familiar looking place. It was the lab Sykes had taken me to when he first told
me of Project Midnight.

Sykes
was in the video. He looked normal, like in the pictures I had seen at his house.
He was sitting across the table from Carlyle and the two seemed to be in an
argument.

“It
won’t work, Carlyle,” Sykes was saying, jabbing his finger onto a stack of manila
folders in front of him. Behind him, I saw the giant screens of the underground
laboratory and hundreds of men and women walking between stations.

“Ragan
shut us down weeks ago, and I still believed in this project but you have to
accept that the potential for a dangerous outcome is too great.”

“What
is Sykes doing there?” I said, still in shock. Dr. Ragan looked quizzically at
me.

“Doing
there? He and Dr. Carlyle were to two head scientists on the team. They helped
create the serum.”

“You
don’t get it,” Carlyle said. “We’re so close. And we’ve got more bids from the
Department of Defense. They’re willing to overlook certain technicalities if we
give them first rights to the final product.”

“Which
we won’t have,” Sykes emphasized. “Don’t kid yourself. You saw what happened to
the chimp we used.”

Carlyle
suddenly looked a little sick. “A minor glitch. We can work around that.”

Sykes
stood up and grabbed his notebooks. “No, we can’t. I’m done, Carlyle. This was
my dream as much as yours, but it’s over. I’m closing us down tomorrow.”

“But
what about the genetics team?” Carlyle said before Sykes could walk out the
door. “We haven’t tried that angle.” Sykes continued shaking his head.

“Look,”
Carlyle was on his feet now, “just because this project doesn’t meet the
precious standards of the great Dr. Lucius Sykes doesn’t mean it should be shut
down. We as humans, as a species, don’t we have a right to make ourselves more
able to survive? We have that adaptation.”

“It’s
not worth the sacrifice!” Sykes said. “And it’s not just the sacrifice to get
there that I’m worried about. This product is unstable and if it fell into the
wrong hands…” He tried to walk away but Carlyle was fuming now.

“I
will not have this stopped just because you grew a conscience! I will be
remembered for this! This project is…” He placed his hands on the table to
steady himself. “This is everything I dreamed of. My ticket out of obscurity.”

Sykes
almost looked like he was going to relent. Then he shook his head a final time.
“No, I’m sorry.” And pushed his way out the doors and vanished off screen.

“He
was—”

“Shh…”
Dr. Ragan said.

A
new video started. Same room, but this time the rest of the lab was deserted and
dark. Carlyle sat in the same place and, standing behind him, was Ryans.

“Ryans?”
I nearly shouted.

“He
was head of security at the project,” Dr. Ragan said.

“What
did you say we were doing here, sir?” Ryans asked. Carlyle started tapping his
pen on the table.

“A
little extra work for the project.” Ryans looked out the glass at the darkened
laboratory.

“I
thought we were getting shut down.” The tapping stopped.

“You
thought wrong.”

Two
men burst through the doors, dragging a third man between them. Ryans started.

“Hey!
Wha—” He looked down at the man between them. “Is that Dr. Sykes?”

“Dr.
Sykes has graciously offered his body for the testing of our latest serum,”
Carlyle said, standing up and removing a syringe from his pocket. “He—”

At
that moment Sykes came alive.
    

“You
traitor!” He screamed, reaching for Carlyle’s throat. “How could you do this to
me?” The two men held him fast. “I was your partner!”

Ryans
looked torn at what to do.

“And
now you’re in my way,” Carlyle said. “Ryans, restrain him.”

“I—”

“Ryans,
Dr. Sykes is confused,” Carlyle said, approaching Sykes with the needle. “He
feels our work is unsafe when I know it’s not. I’m here to prove to him otherwise.”

“Sir,
I have to go against this.”

Sykes
was continuing to struggle, but he was growing tired. Ryans couldn’t take his
eyes off him. He looked frozen to the spot.

“You
know what that will do to me, Carlyle,” Sykes panted. “You’re a murder.” He turned
to Ryans. “Stop him! Help me before—”

Carlyle
plunged the needle into Sykes’ neck. “I’m sure we fixed whatever was the
problem. At least I hope so.”

The
video ended.